When an iHollywood Forum event can spend a day and a half covering search engine marketing, a single column can't cover all the highlights. Last week, I discussed how important it is for consumers to discover video rather than just search for it. This week, I'll go much broader, offering fourteen search-themed insights from a number of speakers and panels.

Fellow Search Insider Gord Hotchkiss tossed out a fantastic challenge for the SEM industry last week. As Gord sees it, the search engines are innovating rapidly, while the SEMs are failing to innovate. It's time, Gord argued, for SEM innovation to catch up. Although I found the piece wonderfully thought-provoking, I have to disagree with it for two reasons. First, SEMs are innovating, and they're innovating at lightning speed -- a phenomenon I've had the pleasure to witness firsthand. Second, it's impossible to compare engine innovation with SEM innovation, because both sides are too secretive about their innovations for us ...

We've been having a discussion around the office lately about whether it is still appropriate to spell out search engine optimization and search engine marketing in our marketing efforts, or whether it's fine to go with the acronyms SEO and SEM.

Get ready: Whether it's personalization, universal results, Web 2.0 functionality or mobile, our search experience is about to change drastically. Search will become more relevant, more functional, more ubiquitous and more integrated. It will come with us (via our mobile devices) more often and in more useful ways. It will expand our entertainment options. It will change forever our local shopping trips. And it will all happen quickly.

As awe-inspiring as the journey into ambient findability may be, I can't help but wonder just how much utility there is to be found (pun intended) in a world where humans can be tagged and flagged -- and the buttons are pushing the buttons. There was a time when freedom meant the ability to speak your mind and democracy referred to everyone having the right to vote. Today, we talk about the freedom and democratization of information. And it's an awesome -- and sometimes invasive -- proposition.

If you were at iHollywood's Search and Media event last week, you might have been surprised to find that the panelists tasked with making sense of video search kept changing the subject when it came up. Everyone wanted to talk about discovery, not search.

Even after a 7% stock drop, Google still looks healthy. Q2 didn't meet investor hopes, but Google still managed to grow a tremendous 58% over last year -- and analysts predict Google will take in roughly 30% of U.S. online ad revenue by year's end. But there's still cause for concern. When you follow Google's spending patterns, you see that more than just putting money into investments, the company is putting money into things it may not understand. This is a bad habit for the growing giant to settle into, and it's why Google may need to think differently as ...

Choosing a search engine optimization partner can be a real challenge. For those with a bad past experience, there's likely to be a great deal of reticence. Those just starting this process have heard all these stories. And what about those who have had some marginal success, but want to see more? Follow these recommendations for better results.

For the first time in a long time, I've been consistently frustrated with the result that Google's been returning for several of my searches. It's not that Google's getting worse, it's that the nature of my searches has changed significantly. My searches are getting fuzzier as I'm stepping into territory I don't know very well. Google is not functioning terribly well as my "discovery" engine.

As a regular reader of Search Insider (or even as a regular search engine user), you already know that both Google and Ask have recently reinvented their search results pages to become integration points for all things text, image and video. In my review of selected brand-related keyword SERPs for video over this time, I'm finding that the biggest changes affecting big ad spenders in the brand keyword space have come in the form of algorithmically placed TV commercials. In accepting that commercials are becoming a common video placement across a certain area of organic brand SERPs, it's worthwhile to ...